


You Can Leave Your Halo On

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-14
Updated: 2010-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-10 03:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set sometime early S4, title from Joe Cocker's "You Can Leave Your Hat On." There isn't a single book of lore in the entire world that will tell you that angels have detachable halos, and Dean isn't about to start writing one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can Leave Your Halo On

Castiel doesn't sleep.

Which isn't like, a new piece of information, not really. Dean isn't stupid or ill-read or whatever it is that Sam sometimes thinks he is - he just has bigger, more important things to worry about than studying angels until he passes out every night. But that doesn't mean he knows _nothing_ about them.

Granted, most of what he's learned, he's learned from observation. And most of that observation has been, somewhat necessarily, of Castiel.

Castiel doesn't eat, either. Occasionally, Dean can convince him to try stuff that's bland, like mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs. Castiel has this weird aversion to extremes - salt, sugar, even the bite of a lemon wedge in a glass of water makes him wrinkle his nose in distaste, an unconsciously..._cute_ reaction that Dean is never going to admit to thinking about, let alone thinking it's _sort of adorable_, not ever.

On a good day he can convince Castiel to have a beer or two, but the angel always looks uncomfortably out of place, the brown bottle rolling against his fingers, and his stupid hair, and his stupid chapped, pretty mouth.

Dean very carefully doesn't mention any of that to Castiel, and _especially_ doesn't let it slip around Sam, because Sam once mentioned that he participated in rallies and if he gets wind that Dean has ever thought about dudes that way he'll get that expression, that 'I'm here to talk if you need to share your manly pain' expression, like it's some sort of crisis. Dean doesn't give a shit. When you hunt monsters for a living, you take what pleasure you can get, _wherever_ you can get it. He's only lucky that the universe hasn't conspired to put him in weirder situations. Like, involving ducks or tractors or something.

But the point being: Dean observes Castiel, almost as much as Castiel observes _him_, and Dean has noticed a few things. Like how the angel not only never sleeps, but he doesn't _lay down_. He doesn't lean back in chairs and he doesn't collapse onto beds the way Dean and Sam do, at the end of a long day, even though Dean knows that the angels are getting their asses handed to them on a regular basis, and Cas _has_ to be tired. He has to be. If nothing else, the body he's wearing has to be exhausted. It's not like he feeds it or ever lets it relax or anything.

Sam makes a muffled, sort of pathetic noise into his pillow.

"Shut up," Dean says. "You weren't the one who got _trampled by a ghost horse._" He's going to have weird, hoof-shaped bruises all over his shoulders pretty soon, he can _feel_ it. Sam turns his head, gives Dean a look from beneath his singed eyebrows like he's an ant and Sam's gigantic head is a magnifying glass, and he's trying really hard to find the right angle so he can set Dean's hair on fire.

That's just speculation, but considering Sam actually _did_ get his hair set on fire, Dean's pretty confident about the thoughts running through his little brother's head.

"I hope you dream about planes," Sam mutters. "Planes full of beautiful women who _just want to be friends_. Thirty thousand feet in the air."

"Dude," Dean says, because that is going _way too far_, except that's when Castiel appears. He looks sombre and intense and Sam very obviously hates him on sight, because he turns his face back into the pillow with an exaggerated groan, and then, a few minutes later, he starts snoring. Sam always snores when he's pissed off.

"Look who decided to finally show up." Castiel blinks at him. He's standing at the foot of Dean's bed, the fucking creeper, and Dean really just wants to yank his serious ass down and bundle him up in starchy blankets for an hour or two. He glances at Sam, who's beginning to sound like a miniature freight train, and then back to Castiel, who stares at him.

"I was unaware that you needed my assistance," Castiel says.

"I fucking hate cowboys," Dean explains. "And I hate _dead_ ones even more. Sam almost got his head caved in with a branding iron."

Castiel opens his mouth, probably to say something like 'his head looks fine to me,' in that way he has that's sort of like being a smartass, but he's too otherwise _pristine_ to get called on it. Dean interrupts with a decidedly unhappy-sounding grunt, and he jerks his head towards the bed he's sitting on.

"Dude, find a chair to sit in, or sit on the bed, or sit on the floor. _Something._ You're making me nervous, and that's the last thing I want to be after being run over by fucking Black Beauty."

Castiel tilts his head. "I have no need to...sit down."

"I don't _give a shit_, Cas. Either sit down, or I'm going to sleep." And he's _not_ going to dream about planes. Asshole.

Castiel has that 'I'm not really of this world and so do not understand your strange human ways' expression that he sometimes gets, like that time when Dean tried to explain baseball to him. Dean's always gotten the feeling that Cas only sees a bunch of monkeys hitting things with sticks, and, you know, alright. There are some _humans_ who think of baseball like that. Whatever. But then, after what feels like an hour of contemplation (it's probably like ten seconds), Cas rolls his shoulders, and then gingerly seats himself on the edge of Dean's bed.

"Seriously," Dean says, because Cas looks so fucking _prim_. Like he's worried he's going to get dust from his shoes on the coverlet or something, and here Dean is, covered in dirt and a little bit of ectoplasm and possibly blood, and he _knows_ Sam is over there shedding massive amounts of half-burnt hair all over the pillows. So Dean rolls himself off the bed, even though Castiel is giving him a pinched look, an 'I wish you wouldn't do this, Dean' look.

"Lie down," Dean says.

"That is not conducive to..."

"It's conducive to my peace of mind, dumbshit. Jesus _Christ_, just lie down before I smother you with a pillow."

Castiel's lips purse. The earlier look of mildly smug superiority has vanished, replaced by something that Dean swears might be vulnerability. It's not entirely unattractive on him.

"If I do this," Cas says slowly, "will you allow me to speak freely about the next seal?"

And blackmail, yeah, blackmail is something Dean can get behind. He stands next to the bed and nods like a bobble head because he thinks if he talks right now he'll make a comment on how blue Castiel's eyes are, and Cas knows everything about him, Cas pulled him from the Pit and remade him, soul-up, so obviously he knows that Dean likes blue eyes and lean bodies and chapped, pink lips. But Castiel doesn't bring it up, so neither does Dean.

Which, you know, it works for them. Dean can be cool with that.

If Cas were human, he'd be making put-upon sounds and he'd probably be bitching silently with his eyes, but he isn't human, so all he does is stare at Dean for like a whole minute before finally reaching up and...

"Is there something wrong with your hair," Dean _doesn't ask_, it's more like stating a fact: Castiel runs his fingers back through his hair, and then sort of does a...twiddly thing, with his thumbs, somewhere over the crown of his head. He looks like he's concentrating. Dean rolls his eyes.

"You would not lie down to rest while wearing a gun holster," Castiel says sagely, and then makes a motion like he's _putting something down on the nightstand_ before carefully reclining against the pillows. Dean, who has never been very good at things like 'personal boundaries' or 'look, don't touch,' immediately reaches out to put his hand in the empty space where Castiel has done...something. What's a minor miracle is that Castiel, who seems to be taking this whole imaginary hat situation quite seriously, doesn't stop him.

"Holy shit," Dean says, because his fingers are _tingling_. There's a radius of maybe six inches where if he sticks his hand through that empty patch of air, it feels sort of like static electricity. His hand feels clean and maybe a little bit numb, but in a way like...it's _over_sensitive. Like tiny vibrations over his skin. "What the fuck, Cas?"

"This, at least, is something that your religious iconography has not been remiss in including."

Dean's brain turns itself sideways. Castiel's head. Art. That electric, tingling feeling. Either Castiel has Magic Fingers installed in his forehead, or he's got...

"A halo," Dean sputters. "You've got to be shitting me. You have a _halo_."

"You have already seen the shadow of my wings. Why is this so different?"

"Because it's a fucking halo, that's why! Why can't I see it?"

"For much the same reason that you are unable to view my wings in their entirety," Castiel murmurs. "Or hear my true voice. It would be...unutterably painful to look upon."

Oh. That's...that's actually a good reason. Dean remembers the gas station, the sound of Castiel's voice, glorious and furious and agonizing. He's not eager for a repeat of that sort of pain.

Dean studies the empty space for a long moment.

"So this is...what, the angelic equivalent of you taking off your tie, then?"

Castiel - and this is how Dean knows he's being a bad influence - Castiel _shrugs_.

"It is...a symbol of authority. Of rank. In much the same way that my wings are."

"Ah," Dean says, and looks down at himself. He isn't wearing a badge or a holster or anything, because this was supposed to be a simple salt and burn, no subterfuge necessary (and there hadn't been, but it had been anything but simple). But he's wearing his jacket and his boots, which he shucks off and then toes out of, respectively, before letting himself fall onto the bed beside Castiel. The angel makes a quiet noise, sort of surprised, and Dean's proud of the fact that he's still interesting enough that Castiel doesn't bother to just read his mind and predict everything he's going to do.

"I see," Castiel says softly. And then, "Perhaps it would have been simpler for you to merely compliment my eyes, rather than implement this...elaborate plan."

Dean turns his head away, because it wasn't a plan, _it wasn't_. In the other bed, Sam snorts into his pillow, and then says, very clearly, "Fucking _shrimp platter_," and Castiel insinuates his arm between the pillow and Dean's shoulders, carefully avoiding any and all ghost horse-induced bruising.

"Things need not be so complicated," he murmurs against Dean's ear. "You are allowed to simply _have_, without consequences, and without prejudice. I shall never judge you, Dean."

Dean tilts his head back, Castiel's breath warm, pressed to his neck. "You know, for a guy with a halo, you're taking yourself awfully fucking seriously." But he can't keep himself from smiling, maybe, just a little.

"Not the lobster sauce," Sam says, and Dean closes his eyes, ready to fall asleep to the sound of rain starting up outside, and Castiel breathing against his skin, and his stupidly enormous brother dreaming about seafood only a few feet away.  



End file.
